


Benchmark

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-30
Updated: 2010-05-30
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:51:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another 5.22 coda with kissing. This one not so happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Benchmark

  
There’s a bench on the border of the little park across from Dean and Lisa’s. It’s the old-fashioned kind, wooden slats painted dark green and the worse for wear. One slat is missing, and the others are chipped and splintered, carved with initials and obscenities and Scriptural references Sam’s not about to look up. A few times there have been couples there, local teenagers making out. Once a homeless man, sleeping. And twice he’s seen Dean himself here, leather jacket and steadily emptying bottle, staring across the street into the windows of his own house. Lurking, just like Sam.

Dean never sees him.

When he’d first come here it had been fall. The wind and scuttling leaves and the smoky smells had made him jumpy, too much, too unsettled. Now it must be winter, and it’s quiet. Body temperature. The streetlight doesn’t buzz or flicker any more. This little corner of the world is getting used to his presence, maybe, like it’s realized he’s just here to watch.

He’s looking in the lit window at Dean and Lisa and Ben, halfway through their dinner and not enjoying it. Ben gets up and slams his chair into the table and runs out of the frame, Lisa following, and Dean just sits, focused on the glass in his hands, twisting it in precise, repetitive circles. He looks older, Sam thinks.  Then there's a sound from Sam’s right, a scraping, and he turns his head and sees Dean beside him on the bench. Dean is beside him on the bench, gouging away with his fingernails at the green paint, and Dean is sitting at a table across the street, staring into a glass of whisky. This . . . hasn’t happened before.

“What're you doing, Dean?” he asks, and he’s a bit surprised to hear himself speak, because that hasn’t happened before, either. The Dean on the bench looks up and smiles at him, tightly. “I’m carving our names on the bench, Sam, what does it look like I’m doing?” he says, and waggles his fingers like it’s an explanation, paint crusted under his nails along with vicious-looking splinters. Sam looks at the slat Dean was working on, but their names aren’t there, not even their initials, just an abstract design of bars and interlocking rings.

They sit in awkward silence for a couple of minutes, like strangers at a bus stop, Dean scraping away. Finally Sam clears his throat. “So,” he hazards, “I’m back?” and it’s definitely a question. Dean looks at him, narrow-eyed, shakes his head slowly. “Sorry to tell you, Sammy, but I’m pretty sure you’re not,” he says, and he leans forward suddenly and takes Sam’s face in his hands and kisses him, hard, and Sam feels nothing, Dean’s lips are as cold as his. He can see himself, his whole face, vivid and smiling, reflected in Dean's eyes, and that doesn’t make sense, they’re too close, and Dean’s, "Dean’s . . . "

Dean is in the house, still absorbed in his undrunk whisky, with a woman and a child fighting it out somewhere in the background. Sam’s Dean, the Dean on the bench, chuckles and leans back, his arm behind Sam’s head and his eyes on the man across the street behind the glass. “He’s there, Sam, you don’t have to worry, he’s not getting out,” he says, in the voice Dean uses to reassure him, and he grabs Sam’s neck lightly and shakes a little, the way Dean used to, a few years back. His eyes are warm, and Sam can’t see himself in them any more, so he smiles a bit, relieved, and Dean smiles back. “You have to get over this fetish you have with cages, kiddo,” he says, and the bench tilts suddenly and Sam’s gone.

He wakes to the hard vacuum of the cage and his own voice, Lucifer’s.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Devil's Bench (The Iron Bars Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/192773) by [tifaching](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tifaching/pseuds/tifaching)




End file.
